Should a company be allowed to patent a life form?

Law and Ethics in the Business Environment. Topic: Intellectual Property

CO4: Apply legal concepts to business scenarios.

CO5: Analyze the differences between major forms of intellectual property protection, and current ethical issues that arise under intellectual property law.

Using the Required Readings and your own research:

Review the requirements for a patent.

Then further discuss: Should a company be allowed to patent a life form?Does it matter if the life form is a non-sentient organism like a plant?Is there a place where the law can ethically draw a line between life as property and life as beyond any person or business appropriation?

In considering these questions read:Assn for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. (2013)

 

References

Medvedieva, M. O., & Blume, Y. B. (2018). Legal regulation of plant genome editing with the CRISPR/Cas9 technology as an example. Cytology and Genetics, 52(3), 204-212.

Pixley, K. V., Falck-Zepeda, J. B., Giller, K. E., Glenna, L. L., Gould, F., Mallory-Smith, C. A., … & Stewart Jr, C. N. (2019). Genome editing, gene drives, and synthetic biology: Will they contribute to disease-resistant crops, and who will benefit?. Annual Review of Phytopathology, 57, 165-188.